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Language Wars Arabic, Etc.) on the Other The phenomenon of a “quarrel” or a “conflict” between Jewish languages (the most common Hebrew term for this is riv haleshonot) or a “struggle” between them (shprakhnkamf in Yiddish) is coterminous with the rise of modern Jewish culture in the 20th century, but in order to understand its character we must look back at the linguistic situation in traditional Jewish society. Internal Jewish bilingualism entailed the simultaneous presence both of Hebrew (and Aramaic) on the one hand and the spoken Jewish vernacular (e.g., Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo- Language Wars Arabic, etc.) on the other. This was a basic feature of traditional Jewish society throughout Avraham Novershtern the centuries, both in the East and in the West. This rather stable linguistic situation began to change significantly in Western and Central Europe in the Early Modern period, when Jews gradually adopted the non-Jewish languages around them as their own. The magnitude of this process was already striking in the second half of the 18th century. At that time, the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, sanctioned it ideologically, claiming that the linguistic barriers between Jews and non-Jews should be erased as far as the spoken language was con- cerned. The approach of the German Haskalah towards Yiddish, the Jewish vernacular, was thus extremely negative, and with the exception of a few enclaves this language rapidly lost its vitality in German-speaking areas. In such a cultural constellation, there could be no “language wars” of any kind. The linguistic processes affecting Jewish Eastern Europe in modern times were considerably different and extremely compli- cated. Unlike the situation in German-speaking areas, in Jewish Eastern Europe there were at least three languages competing in their attrac- tiveness for Jews who wanted to acculturate: German, Polish, and Russian. The size of the Jewish population, its unprecedented growth during the 19th century, and its concentration 21 in close-knit communities significantly slowed The fact that Hebrew was not a spoken language down the pace of linguistic assimilation. On in Jewish Eastern Europe implied that, in those the verge of World War I only a relatively small years, Yiddish was the almost exclusive lin- number of Jews in Eastern Europe embraced a guistic means in an additional field of cultural non-Jewish language. The process that pointed production — the theater. In all these aspects, in that direction was already unmistakable, when presenting this complex cultural pan- although its magnitude could still be ignored orama, it is crucial to keep in mind the fact in those years. This was the background for the that “language wars” were relevant primarily for rise of the Hebrew press and Modern Hebrew those individuals and groups that underwent literature in Eastern Europe. Somewhat later a secularization process. At that time, such Yiddish, the language spoken by millions of groups constituted only a tiny minority among Jews, experienced a similar growth, although Eastern European Jews. on a smaller scale. Both Jewish literatures were Due to the mass migration to the basically the result and the cause for a rapid United States, modern Yiddish culture experi- process of secularization. enced a significant geographical expansion as With the rise of national consciousness well, and it also started to function as a means among Eastern European Jews, the question of global Jewish communication. Could Yiddish of the “national” language became increasingly thus arise from its lowly status as the spoken relevant at the beginning of the 20th century. language of the folk? This was the basic question A peculiar and highly dynamic cultural hotly debated during a conference convened situation characterized Jewish Eastern Europe in 1908 in Czernowitz, a city that at that time at that time: two Jewish languages (Hebrew and belonged to the Hapsburg Empire. The resolu- Yiddish) began to compete for certain cultural tion adopted on that occasion proclaimed functions and, at the same time, to complement Yiddish as “a national language of the Jewish themselves in others. It is therefore important people.” Such a formulation left ample room for to understand the full range of factors that different approaches towards the importance affected the use of Jewish languages in speech of Hebrew. Nevertheless, the very possibility of and writing. In those years the visibility of proclaiming the “national” character of Yiddish Hebrew as a spoken language in Eastern Europe transformed the Czernowitz Yiddish Conference was utterly negligible, and only in Palestine into the symbolic beginning of a “language could the efforts in this direction show a war” between both Jewish languages. This “war” modest measure of success. The competition reached its peak in the next few decades. between Hebrew and Yiddish thus started to The years after World War I witnessed manifest itself first and foremost in the field efforts to implement Jewish utopias of different of written production, in literature, and in the kinds — political, social, and cultural. Those press. The switch from Hebrew to Yiddish was were the years when the efforts to revitalize particularly felt after the Russian revolution Hebrew as a spoken language achieved a signifi- of 1905, in the years when the Yiddish press cant success in Palestine. Its almost exclusive experienced significant growth and started to role in public life in the country was practically be a phenomenon of cultural mass production. uncontested, and the efforts to deny any place Jewish writers started to ponder whether to for Yiddish sometimes took ugly and even write in Hebrew or in Yiddish, and some of them violent forms. On the other hand, those were opted to embrace both languages in their work. also the years during which Yiddish cultural 22 activities reached an unprecedented magnitude notwithstanding the fact that it was the home in the Soviet Union; all manifestations of language of most of the children attending Hebrew culture were banned in that country, them. At the same time, Hebrew had no place in no small measure due to the active inter- in either in the official Yiddish school system in vention of the Jewish communists, who consid- the Soviet Union sponsored by the Communist ered Yiddish the only legitimate language of state, nor in those Yiddish schools in Poland the “Jewish working masses.” The linguistic sponsored by the Bund, the Jewish Socialist Party. strife between Hebrew and Yiddish in all the The underlying approach behind this geographical centers of modern Jewish culture educational philosophy was rather clear: the had indeed a clear ideological motivation new generation of modern Jews should embrace behind it. It involved “General” Zionists, Labor only one Jewish language. This ideological ap- Zionists, Jewish Socialists under the banner proach was also boosted by the practical need of the “Bund,” proponents of Jewish autonomy to master non-Jewish languages, making the in the Diaspora, and Jewish communists. The knowledge of two Jewish languages in addition Zionist commitment to implementing the to the co-territorial language a cultural luxury. universal use of Hebrew in Palestine proved The decline of Yiddish, the use of Hebrew in ultimately to be stronger and more successful Israel, and the erosion in the ideological com- than the commitment to Yiddish among the mitment to language maintenance in general, other ideological trends and political parties, gradually relegated this confrontation between even before the Holocaust and the suppression Jewish languages to the past. of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union. The most visible manifestation of the suggested readings David Fishman. The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture. conflict between Hebrew and Yiddish was in (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). the area of modern Jewish education, where Joshua Fishman, ed. Never Say Die!: A Thousand Years of the drive towards Jewish monolingualism was Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters. (The Hague: Mouton, 1981). particularly visible. The success in revitalizing Lewis Glinert, ed. Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile. Hebrew as a spoken language in Palestine can (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). largely be attributed to the relentless efforts Emanuel S. Goldsmith. Modern Yiddish Culture: The Story of of a determined group of teachers who placed the Yiddish Language Movement. (New York: Shapolsky, 1987). spoken Hebrew at the very center of the modern Jewish educational curriculum. This determi- nation was also pivotal in the only significant instance of a “language war” launched in modern times against a non-Jewish language: the successful campaign in 1913 against the plan to implement German as the language of instruction in the Technion, the higher institute for technology that was about to be founded in Haifa. This linguistic fervor was also pivotal in creating a network of Hebrew schools in the Russian Empire, in interwar Poland, and in some of its adjacent countries. Yiddish did not play any role in the curriculum of those schools, 23.
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